


That No Children Burn

by Ferith12



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Good!Salazar Slytherin, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, canon? never heard of it, the world was a very different place over a thousand years ago
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-10 23:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15959732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferith12/pseuds/Ferith12
Summary: This is a story of the days before purebloods. This is a story of the days before high wizarding society. This is a story of broken children. This is the story of Salazar Slytherin, and this is the story of Hogwarts.





	That No Children Burn

Salazar Slytherin was not born to power or wealth.  He was not born to an old family, he was born in the days when those old families were just beginning.  He was not born in a proud, old manor with proud, old traditions to proud blood purists.  He was not even a pureblood.  Salazar Slytherin was born in a poor part of a poor town to a young witch by the muggle who had raped her.

Long, long in the future, history books would say that burnings hardly mattered for witches and wizards.  Most of them, they will say blithely, could easily charm the flames,  some of them found it fun. Fun.

They will not mention, these dry, old history books, so secure in their view of the world, they will not mention that these were the days before Hogwarts.   These were the days before children of all classes all over the country received a letter in the mail.  These were the days before Hogwarts ensured that even those with nothing could afford at least the basic magic necessities, could receive an education.  The history books would fail to mention that in order survive roaring fire, even the most powerful witch would need to know how.  Knowledge requires teachers, and teachers required money, and it is the wealthy that are written about in history books.

They were burned when Salazar was seven.  He screamed and he screamed, even though the flames only tickled, and his mother barely screamed at all as she burned with her arms around her son, while jeering (numerous, wealthy, powerful) muggles looked on.  He never knew whether it was his own childish accidental magic, or some desperate, love fueled charm of his mother's that protected him, but there was no magic to save his mother.

Like many young witches and wizards of those days, Salazar was a fugitive, a wanderer, surviving by what work he could find and what food he could steal, and always, always desperately determined not to be caught for magic.

Salazar was gifted, extremely gifted.  He taught himself magic with a beat up old wand that didn't suit him, given to him by an ancient wizard who saw a boy in need.

Kindness, to Salazar, came from wizards and witches, the poor, the persecuted, the dispossessed.  Muggles dealt only in violence and cruelty.

Salazar went from town to town, he taught himself potions and sold them, to muggles and magicals alike.  In those days, before the statute of secrecy, you could get away with quite a lot, so long as the potion wasn't blatantly magical.  "I am selling these for my father," he would say, "He is a great physician."   Few, of course, took him quite at his word, but when desperate enough, even the most hateful of muggles might seek out the little witch-boy.  And Salazar never stayed long enough for his remedies to work and his clients to remember that they hated his kind.

When he was seventeen, he found Helga Hufflepuff, or Helga found him.  She was a widow who had devoted her life to helping others with magic, especially children.  Though Salazar was now no longer a child, she took him under her wing.  She provided him with resources, potions ingredients that could not easily be foraged for in the British countryside, taught him to read and write, and the more formal magics that he had not been able to pick up on his own.  And Salazar thrived, in just a few years writing papers and book, becoming renowned in his own right among those with magic.

They disagreed on many things, the woman and the boy.  Helga believed in the importance of fairness, in kindness, in helping anyone who needed it, be they friend or foe.  Salazar believed that idealism, that goodness was not a thing a witch or wizard could afford.  But they both believed in loyalty, and they both had a passion for the magical community and protecting those with magic.

"I want," Salazar said, thinking of going cold and hungry on the road, thinking of running, of fear and hatred, thinking of a woman's arms and the smell of burning, "To create a safe place.  A school, where every magical child could come and learn in peace, so that they might be free and fearless, and have power over the muggles who would hurt them."

"It would take a great deal of work," Helga told him,  "And magic of a sort I doubt has been invented yet.  We will need others, money for one thing, and the greatest magical minds we can find."

"We will do whatever it takes,"  Salazar said.

Even in those days there were those who were both magical and wealthy.   Rowena Ravenclaw was a minor princess from a tradition that cared more about a person's mind than their possession or lack of magic.  Godric Gryffindor's father was a magical Lord whose House had kept the town of Hogsmeade safe for generations.  It took many years, but together the four of them founded Hogwarts, a school of Witchcraft and Wizardry that gathered boys and girls from all over the country, a safe place, a place for learning and growing, so that one day no children might burn.


End file.
